Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness. Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability podcast is a production of optimal L L C and optimal HR-V. Check us out at optimal hr-v dot com. Please enjoy the show.
Speaker 1 00:00:32 Welcome Prince to the Heart rate variability podcast. Uh, I am really excited for our guest today, a Dr. Donald Moss. Um, I have, uh, since Ina gave, uh, helped connect us, have been, uh, diving down, uh, the, the vast rabbit hole of the Pathways model and a lot of your other work. And I'm just so excited, uh, to, to get you on the podcast and, uh, ha have a conversation with you about really pathways and just the amazing work you have done, uh, over your career. So, uh, Dr. Moss, if, if you'd just like to introduce yourself, uh, uh, to our audience and a little bit, uh, about your work.
Speaker 2 00:01:14 Well, thank you, Matt. I appreciate it. I appreciate your, uh, introduction to this podcast. Um, I am Don Moss. I'm the Dean of the College of Integrative Medicine and Health Sciences at Saybrook University in Pasadena. Uh, I'm coming to you today from my home, which sits on a sand dune along the lake, Michigan Shore, uh, near Grand Haven, Michigan. Awesome. Um, I mentioned Saybrook. I've been with Saybrook for over 20 years. Um, and in 2009, I, um, launched a new college at Saybrook College of Integrative Medicine and Health Sciences with the assistance of Jim Gordon. Uh, Jim is with the Center for Mind Body Medicine in Washington, dc. Anyway, our goal was to carry, uh, the Saybrook humanistic mind, body, spirit model into healthcare. And we developed, uh, several degrees now. Uh, I'm the dean and, and we have, um, college, uh, within the college we have a Department of Mind body medicine, which looks at mind body practices, meditation, biofeedback imagery, uh, master's degree and a PhD.
Speaker 2 00:02:24 We have a department of Integrative and Functional Nutrition because we believe that food is medicine. So we have a master's and a PhD there. We have a department of applied Psychophysiology, which is like the, the heavy science part of mind body medicine. Um, and that, that program too has a master's and a PhD. And then most recently we started an integrated program in social work at the doctoral level. Uh, so I've been teaching chronic illness to social work students using the Pathways model, which brings you back to, uh, Matt's Introduction Pathways model. Yes. Okay. Now, where do we begin, um, in our conversation this, this morning, Matt, you talked about heart rate variability. Yes. And I know that's a big part of your own research in your own books. Well, I became interested in heart rate variability in way quite a while ago. Uh, people in the field of medical research and people in the field of psychophysiology have known that there were some important connections between what happens with heart rate and what happens in the brain.
Speaker 2 00:03:32 Yeah. Way back in the 1960s, uh, John and Beatrice Lacey, uh, published heavy duty nerdy articles on a two-way pathway between the heart and the brain. And they talked about the, the heart having its own nervous center, nervous system center with the heart. Um, and then in the seventies and eighties, we started seeing all sorts of practical implications of this coming out in medical research. Um, in 1978, a team of, um, researchers in Australia studied heart attack victims in hospital, and found out that those who had higher heart rate variability, uh, they gave it a number of terms, uh, sin, uh, sinus rhythms, re uh, respiratory sinus rhythms because the heart rate follows the breathing. Yeah. But those who had more variability tended to live longer. They had less, uh, recurrence of heart attacks and less severe heart attacks than a similar piece of research.
Speaker 2 00:04:37 In the eighties, um, Robert Kleger, uh, in the states studied heart attack victims and found that those who've had higher heart rate variability survived were four times more likely to survive than those who had the lowest heart rate variability. So this really started getting people's attention. Everybody wants now to have higher heart rate variability, <laugh>. Well, then Paul Laer, who's a good friend of mine, colleague, and also the editor of the journal, applied Psychophysiology and biofeedback. He had a son studying in Russia. So Paul visited St. Petersburg in Russia, not in Florida <laugh>. Yeah. And, um, Paul being the, uh, dedicated scientist that he is, he, he contacted researchers there. He went to the university and they'd started talking about some wacky group of people across town in St. Petersburg who were training children to increase their heart rate variability, um, to treat their asthma.
Speaker 2 00:05:38 Well, Paul had some assumptions about heart rate variability, and he knew that if you were in an asthma attack, we did not want to increase parasympathetic activity, uh, because the asthma attack would get worse. Hmm. So he was a little dubious, and he wondered if these researchers were even harming children. But he went across town and he has an open mind. So he looked at their case narratives, and low and behold, they could really demonstrate that the children who got this special training, um, actually increased their baseline heart rate variability and had less asthma attacks. So, Paul, again, open mind, came back to the United States, did some research here, imported two researchers, uh, yiv Gainy and Braya BCI from Russia, um, and continued his research Later, um, 2000 published a protocol and manual for heart rate variability training. Um, then published a very important study, uh, 1997, a study on asthma, a highly documented study showing this heart rate variability treatment actually improved asthma.
Speaker 2 00:06:49 Well, I jumped in, um, I started talking about heart rate variability and workshops that I was doing on anxiety. I didn't fully understand it. I didn't fully understand the protocol, but I was doing some, just in my own clinical practice, I was started training people to smooth their heart rate variability, increase the size of the curve. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and I started seeing people coming out of their anxiety disorders quite rapidly. That's awesome. Um, and then I started seeing improvement with other patients when I tried the same kinds of training. So, um, I, I published a article on heart rate variability myself in 2004. I also gave a workshop on heart rate variability in Mexico in 2004. Um, again, didn't fully understand the Laer protocol or the Lara Diverts protocol. I would now say, because Paul, uh, Paula and Richard Goertz have worked together on this for a minute.
Speaker 1 00:07:46 Friends of the show, by the way. Oh,
Speaker 2 00:07:48 Good. Okay. <laugh>. Well, and, and I understand the audience includes people who know all about heart rate variability. So much of the
Speaker 1 00:07:56 Yes. No, but I, I think it's, it's fascinating where you sort of intersect and come into this story story too, because it kind of picks up that from, from from where, uh, other folks have sort of, uh, uh, got us too. So, so I'm fascinated to see, uh, your, your growth from that, that 2004 point as well.
Speaker 2 00:08:15 Yeah. Well, it's, it, it was fascinating, um, to see this emerge. Uh, I don't wanna forget to mention Roland McGrady and the HeartMath Institute. Yeah. Because already in the nineties, they were publishing articles on heart rhythm coherence, as they call it mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and, uh, I, I attended, uh, Paul LA's lectures. I attended Richard Gilbert's lectures. Roland McGrady came to the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. And I remember the excitement that he was there, and, and I attended his lecture. So there was a lot of learning going on back then. And since that time, um, of course it's become respectable by 2008, um, Paul Air and Dick Erz and I brought out a special issue of the Biofeedback magazine highlighting everything that was happening. Yeah. Um, in that field of heart rate variability. So we come to the present and we find out that, um, heart rate variability has documented applications in so many different disorders. Um, Matt mentioned that I'm interested in chronic illness, and I have this model called the Pathways model. I would guess that half of the case narratives I publish include segments on heart rate variability, because it has so many benefits for people with depression, with chronic ill medical illness, uh, with anxiety disorders. Uh, it's just a remarkable tool. Um, I'm always skeptical when people say, oh, it's good for everything, but frankly, heart rate variability, uh, because it impacts on our auto autonomic nervous system is good for many, many things. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:57 Yeah. I, it is just like this universal. That's why I got so excited about it, is like, as I shared with you and as our audience knows, like I, I, my, my, my background comes from, uh, working with trauma. And so, like the stress or burnout from, from my kind of the organizational leadership hat. And so to measure that, but then you start to learn about everything that is, you know, sort of central to the autonomic nervous system in the stress response. And I, I, we, we sort of have the, uh, a, a drinking game, whatever your drink of choice is, is, uh, you know, Google, H R V and anything, and see if you get a, a journal article that comes up and do it, which makes writing books really easy. Cause great work folks like you and other folks you've mentioned have done for us throughout the years. It's, it gives a baseline in which to, to really integrate this in, in really powerful ways.
Speaker 2 00:10:52 Well, and you're right. Uh, you can Google it and come up with everything. Um, I was impressed that here we are talking about heart attacks and chronic illness, and yet, uh, Bruno Dave Mais in Milan used it with his soccer players. Yeah. He developed something called the mind room, uh, using biofeedback instrumentation. He did do neurofeedback retraining the brain so athletes could be attentive, but not thinking a lot. Right. Uh, Sue Wilson calls that busy brain, we don't want a busy brain when you're out on the soccer field. We want you attentive tuned in and responding. Yeah. And they found that both neurofeedback and heart rate variability training really enhanced, um, the athlete's attentiveness and response on the field. And they won a World Cup Yeah. In 2007. And, um, Pierre, uh, samp, also friends know him as red, uh, trained Canadian speed skaters, uh, similar, similar model, neurofeedback heart rate variability, some other, um, cognitive things that he did. And in 2010, his skaters won a number of medals at the Winter Olympics. So these things are good for healthy people, they're good for optimal performance, but they also have a lot of interventions for anybody who's troubled with, um, emotional difficulties or medical, uh, chronic medical conditions.
Speaker 1 00:12:15 So, I, I would love to ask you, you, you mentioned, uh, this is a question I've been holding in my pocket for the right person, and, and I, I, you opened the door for, for me to ask it is talking about mind, body, and spirit. Um, and it's that, that spiritual part that there was a book that came out and, and I will just butcher the author's name, so I'll, I'll just name the title. Um, that, that was in the generational trauma sort of thing, is, uh, my grandmother's hands, uh, you know, looking at intergenerational trauma and the author, uh, refers to, uh, the vagus nerve as the spirit nerve. Um, now, I, I struggle a little bit trying to keep a scientific foundation. I don't know if I have enough evidence to to, to really use that language, but it's, I I, it's so beautiful <laugh>, like, well, it's,
Speaker 2 00:13:09 It's beautiful.
Speaker 1 00:13:10 Yeah. So I would love for you to talk, I, I, I know I'm opening up a can of worms, but, but I really have to do it is like this intersection of mind, body, and spirit and heart rate variability, vagal nerve activat. Like, where is this, where's this intersect for you? Where, where does this come together? Because I find H R V kind of brings the mind and body together. Um, I think it's always been together, but Decart kind of separated it for us, uh, for several hundred years and just kind of, we are mind, body, and spirit. And, and where H R V autonomic nervous system health kind of, uh, works its way in there.
Speaker 2 00:13:49 Well, it's interesting that you say that. Um, I mentioned, uh, John and Vitri Lacey way back in the sixties, and they showed that when, when you look at cardiac function, things happen in the cardiovascular system, it impacts on the cortex on the brain. Well, we know a whole lot more about that today, including sub-cortical effects. Um, I'm working on a book with Patrick Stephan at Brigham Young University, who, by the way, would be a good candidate for this podcast, <laugh> great pa Uh, Patrick is a very gifted guy who has in fact looked studied spirituality, psychology, uh, psychophysiology and spirituality. So he would be a great author for this program. Um, anyway, we're working on a book on psychophysiology for psychotherapy. Nice. And there's a chapter by Julian Tha and, um, Julia went, who's a, uh, Julian Thir is well known, distinguished professor at, uh, university of California Irvine.
Speaker 2 00:14:50 Uh, Julie is a research fellow at the University of Potsdam, and they wrote a chapter basically looking at vaguely mediated H R V. So unpack this vaguely mediated the vagus nerve, innervates the parasympathetic nervous system. When we have more vagal innervation, we have higher, uh, larger oscillations in heart rate mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So when you've got more vaguely mediated heart rate variability, you get better inhibitory control in the brain, you get a better adaptive response to whatever's happening around the person. Um, they, they argued that heart rate variability is a trans diagnostic marker for psychopathology. In other words, if you've got more heart rate variability, you're gonna have less psychopathology. You've got, if you've got low heart rate variability, you've got a lot more psychopathology. Um, they, they cite a lot of data on subcortical brain sectors that are impacted by the vagus nerve. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, the executive centers and the, and the prefrontal cortex, uh, but also the limbic brain, the amygdala.
Speaker 2 00:16:01 Yeah. Well, how does this intersect with spirituality? I don't think we have all the connections yet. Uh, but certainly the whole idea of neuro, the theology, which is out there, uh, aquino and others, uh, talking about neurotheology, the brain is the organ which supports emergent spiritual processes. Yeah. You know, Moses in the desert, centuries ago, interacting with a burning bush, something was going on in his brain. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, am I saying that it wasn't real? No, I'm not saying it wasn't real. I'm saying that to be spiritual, re responsive to whatever spiritual dimension we're in touch with, we need a brain and we need a, a working brain, and we need a brain where the autonomic nervous system somehow opens our sensors, opens our antenna to spirituality. Yeah. So when I'm walking along the Lake, Michigan shore, which is one of my spiritual experiences, um, at any season, whether it's icebergs on the shore or summer and seagulls and, and just, you know, just lapping waves on a gentle morning, there's something happening in my brain. There's something happening with my vagus nerve and my autonomic nervous system that's opening me to that experience. Yeah. So, that's the best answer I can give. Um, you might get the neurotheology people on here <laugh>, and they'll tell you more <laugh>, they'll tell you more detail about what's happening in the brain. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:17:34 Well, I just love that, that you bring that, that spirituals. I, I think it's something that, well, I, I know because I'm old enough to know things nowadays. Like we, we, we struggle to talk about, uh, I think in mainstream healthcare. I even think in the mental health arena, its social services that not, it's such a big player. When, when I work with folks like who've experienced chronic homelessness and addiction, and they're sort of on the other side of that journey, I always, if I can do it in a safe way, ask them, Hey, what, what was the kind of moments or moments that helped you kind of change your story and change the course of your life? And, you know, most, I would say 80% of the responses, um, include some spiritual reconnection or, or discovery, uh, a part of that. And it's like, well, if there's, this is a part of the, if this is a variable in all these people's story, how, how do we help?
Speaker 1 00:18:34 How, how do we handle this? How do we work forward? And, and that mind, body, spirit connection, you know, and, and I, I like, almost like the, the, with the window of tolerance, maybe like the, the parasympathetic ventral activation opens the, the window for, for that. You know, I think it's, it's just a way to bring this in, thinking into what, what we know about the mind body connection now. Uh, you know, bringing that variable. And I just think it's so exciting, uh, that we may be able to talk about this in more scientific way,
Speaker 2 00:19:07 And we can, um, and I had had an interesting experience with this 20 years ago, actually more than 20 years ago. I was president of the National Biofeedback Association, uh, association for Applied Psychophysiology and biofeedback. And, um, I was looking for what am I gonna do? What kind, what is gonna be the meeting theme for my annual meeting this year? And I chose the circle of the soul. Hmm. Uh, the connection between spirituality and health as my meeting theme. Now, ironically, the meeting site was already chosen, and it was Las Vegas <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:19:41 So I'm,
Speaker 2 00:19:43 I'm bringing the soul to Las Vegas <laugh>. Well,
Speaker 1 00:19:46 Not necessarily the spiritual end of the desert. I know
Speaker 2 00:19:49 It <laugh>. However, uh, we had a wonderful meeting. Uh, we had a number of speakers addressing the scientific research that was emerging already at that time. Um, but we also had one of our scientific, our hard no scientists, members of the society resign in protest. Wow. Because he said, you shouldn't mix up the word spirit with the word science <laugh>. So, um, now I think that's changed. I think since that time, we've seen 20, 20 plus years of, of research on spirituality, religious practices, the impact on everyday health, the impact on longevity. Um, and there are, there is clear, solid research. Some of the research, I think, amounts to people who have, um, a sense of purpose in their life have a better reason to get up the next morning. Um, I, I did a lot of work in my graduate days on chronic illness, and one of the things I learned was that people who have something better to do don't get sick as much. Um, I was working with two surgical departments and the nurses told me, uh, people who love their job and have a career, um, get over the side effects from these surgeries very quickly because they need to get back to work. They can't. Yeah. They miss it. People who hate their job, people who don't have a job, people whose life is pretty empty, stay sick for six to 12 months. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:21:16 Wow. And it was, it was pretty clear. Um, so having a sense of purpose animates our physiology. Yeah. And spiritual, having a sense of mission in life. You know, whether it comes from traditional religion or whether it comes from a dedication to an art, uh, to, to writing, um, to research, having something bigger than ourselves. And we will live longer, and we will not have as many sick days.
Speaker 1 00:21:46 Yeah. So, so I, I wonder as you asked that, uh, I'm on, get in the weeds here, and I promise I'll pull us right back out, <laugh>, but I wonder, like when, when you, when you think about all the research you've done and thinking you've done, and writing, you've done on sort of this, you know, in integration, I, I would say that if I were to sum up all your work that I've been exposed to, like integration, uh, seems to be the, the word that just pops to mind an integrative approach is what I see, uh, pathways, uh, being looking at bringing in these different practices and sort of, uh, you know, kind of a stage based or a phase based kind of process with folks. You know, is it, when we talk about the mind body connection, um, you know, I, I find, you know, on one hand I almost wanna say, well, there's, it's just one without the room for like the vinn diagram where there's just the body, or there's just the mine.
Speaker 1 00:22:43 I'm also like, uh, Daniel Siegel has been a huge teacher of mine over the years too. So his theory, like, uh, the mind being something sort of greater than the bag of nerves and muscles and stuff in the body because of the social connection with other people and how that hits us. So I just like, with all your kind of thinking around this, you know, where, where do you come, uh, cross? Could you talk to the neuroscientists, the hardcore, and they, they, you say the mind and they say, you better be talking about the brain. Cuz that's all there is. Then you've got other people, and I think spirituality takes us here a little bit too, is something beyond us, a connection to a higher power. Or as Daniel Siegel wants to bring in the energy and information that flows not only internally, but between people as well. And I, I'd love to just get your thinking, um, on, is, is the mind greater? Where, where do you, where's that kind of inform your thinking?
Speaker 2 00:23:42 Well, I think obviously we need our mind, we need our brain. Um, I think my brain, my mind rests on my brain processes, but it's, that's a two-way pathway as well. Yeah. My mind, the language I learned, the culture i, I internalize all helps organize the brain. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So it's not just that the brain causes mental processes, sees it's, um, vigotsky, the Russian, um, neuropsychologist showed us that culture and language tie the knots and organize the wiring and the pathways in the brain. So if we wanna understand the brain, we better understand culture and mind as well. And spirituality. Yeah. So I, I think it, I think it is a package. Um, my own background, before I entered Psychophysiology, um, I have a PhD in existential psychology and existential philosophy <laugh>. So, um, that was, that was my interest. My university had an institute called Formative Spirituality. Wow. Um, and it was a recognition that the human being is mind, body, and spirit.
Speaker 1 00:24:51 Very Harold.
Speaker 2 00:24:52 Yeah. Harold Kaney wrote an article for medical students in jama. There's a JAMA section for medical students. And he wrote an article and I think about 2000, and he said, the human being is mind, body, and spirit. If we ne neglect any one portion of this totality, the person will suffer. And I've seen it because in my, um, in my clinical work, I had people who, for whom the spiritual alone was what moved them forward and through their chronic illness. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:25:24 Yeah. Such powerful
Speaker 2 00:25:27 Sometime. And it could also be the social. Yeah. I mean, I remember one elderly person who attained a, attended a, uh, pain management program I was running, and she attended twice and disappeared. And I thought, oh, that's too bad. We just didn't connect with her. And then I started getting Christmas cards from her thanking me for the change in her life. Well, it turned out we talked about social supports the second day she attended and she went home and called a sister she hadn't been in touch with. And they connected. Yeah. And then she didn't hurt as much, and she started getting active again. She and the sister started doing things and they started connecting with cousins. They hadn't seen that social connection, something beyond my body, reve everything that was happening in her body.
Speaker 1 00:26:18 Absolutely. So
Speaker 2 00:26:20 Are we just, what's inside the physiology, the brain? No, that's too narrow of you.
Speaker 1 00:26:25 Yeah. Well, and that, that's the second part of the answer that, that I, with folks in that, that really kind of have been through a dark place in their life. It's also a connection to an outreach worker, a counselor, a therapist, a social worker, along with that reconnection or connection to, uh, spirit or faith. So it's like you, you nailed both sides of that answer. It's like, there's that social connect. Yeah. I click with somebody. I, I I, I establish, especially for folks who have been through a lot of trauma, that that initial person that's able to kind of break through attachment stuff and being treated poorly and stigma and racism and all this stuff that a lot of people have been exposed to that individual and then that faith component as well. And those two variables just seem to be so powerful, uh, for, for folks.
Speaker 1 00:27:14 Again, they've been in some of the worst situations, uh, you could imagine. So I, I love that answer. Um, so I, I gotta ask you, because I, you know, I'm looking at, I'm looking at the Amazon page here, and I'm not sure if this is the original publication date, but, uh, the book you were involved in, uh, the foundations of Heart Rate variability Biofeedback has a 2016 publication date, but I know at least you had to start that process a year or so earlier than the publication date. So I would love, you know, to kind of pick up your journey a little bit and talk about kind of what you have seen over the, kind of the short term. Because, you know, I think there's a lot of folks like me who got really excited once they learned about H R V. Um, and with the technology of being able to bring this in, um, whether as a therapist, I kind of think about it as homework, uh, for folks.
Speaker 1 00:28:10 Uh, now biofeedback can follow you home and in a really cool way. And I know that there's been on, uh, some really good efforts there for, for decades now, but it's this popularity of something, you know, that, that some of the heroes like yourself and the founders like yourself, who really got us to kind of the 2015 area, then seeing, like, you know, with all these different apps and, uh, working with this, I just kind of wonder what it's like for the world to come to, to where you are at knowing that you had a good, uh, you know, one of the people that helped get this out into consciousness at the same time.
Speaker 2 00:28:50 Well, thank you, Matthew. I, um, I have been excited at the emergence of heart rate variability. Um, early on it seemed somewhat controversial. I mean, who cares whether your heart rate goes up and down? Yeah. Um, and then obviously the medical research shows it, it makes a difference in survival. It makes a difference in health, it makes a difference, um, for athletes. Um, but it is widely used now, and as you said, the apps available just proliferate. Yeah. Um, we can do almost everything now, um, through an app smartphone or a, or a, a wearable Yeah. Sensor impacting with a smartphone. Uh, I was just offered a demo of a new wearable system this week. Um, and it's just remarkable. Uh, when I started, um, I had a very, um, wedded to the office technology. Uh, I had a good multimodal biofeedback system. Um, but if I wanted somebody to practice something at home, they had to use their parents' laptop computer, uh, to use the, um, breathing pacer that I was using at that time. Um, the Easy Air plus from, uh, the Biofeedback Federation of Europe, I, I still use that. Um, but today with the <laugh>, the number of breath apps, the number of H R V apps, it's just remarkable. Yeah. Um, and you're associated with that development with the possibility of doing a resonance frequency assessment. Yeah. Um, on, with simple technology, it doesn't cost $10,000. Right.
Speaker 1 00:30:26 <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:30:29 Under 50. We, we got it under 50, even if it's any under 50. Uh, you know, because one, one of my, my, my passion and our listeners will is like H R V for everyone. Like, like I, I see this health inequity like developing that if you can afford a $400 watch or a $500 annual membership, or a really expensive ring, you can get this data. And I've been battling health inequities all my career, working with the populations I, I I work with. And it's like, oh, here's one. Maybe just, maybe if I work my butt off I that this won't just be for the wealthy, uh, that this can be, you know, that we get this in social workers in shelters, you know, that the people that I, I really think I could argue, I think everybody needs heart rate variability, but, but these folks are just often for God gotten until 10, 15 years after the rest of us might have access to this.
Speaker 1 00:31:27 So that's, that's the exciting thing. I think with all the work that, that, that the, the, the pioneers like yourself have done. It's like, okay, how do we, how do we get this into vulnerable populations? How do we, how do we get this, these populations into the research? Uh, you know, uh, because they're often forgotten in that as well. And, and hopefully, uh, you know, getting them into these populations, I I would argue the most dysregulated autonomic nervous systems potentially in our society due to childhood trauma, addiction, just overwhelming stress in their day-to-day lives. You know, do we see the same results? Uh, and I'm excited to be able to start to answer those questions in ways that, like you said, we don't need $10,000 worth of machinery, uh, uh, to do this at this point.
Speaker 2 00:32:17 Well, it's funny, I, um, I've been interested in how can we give away self-regulation? Yes. How can we make it available for a wider population? Yes. And a lot of people in the field, Steve Farian, uh, took biofeedback into prisons. Yeah. And he, and he did some very remarkable work helping people who were, in a sense, hopeless. Yeah. Castaways throwaways Right. From society, helping them to learn to self-regulate their bodies and brains. And of course, when we rehab the, the brain, yeah. The human being is no longer that same human being they were before. And that's what Steve found the possibility of awakening the soul in a, in a career criminal.
Speaker 1 00:32:59 Right.
Speaker 2 00:33:00 Um, but I had some experiences like that. Um, I mentioned Mexico earlier. I, I made a trip. I have a friend, um, Benjamin, uh, Trejo Dominguez at unam, uh, the autonomous National University of Mexico. He and I did a, uh, intervention after hurricane, the hurricane that hit Honduras in 1998. Yeah. Uh, we went to Cho Luca. Uh, we did some interventions in other places teaching people simple self-regulation. And Benjamin had done this earlier after Hurricane Pauline in Mexico. He'd gone into these large stadiums where people were being sheltered and taught them to breathe, taught them breathing practices, and taught them to, um, those who were illiterate, taught them to write out some of their feelings. And he used little Guatemalan worry dolls for people who were illiterate. He gave, he gave out hundreds of these little, um, Guatemala worry dolls, and told them to, to tell their troubles, their sadness to the doll at night, and put it under the pillow.
Speaker 2 00:34:04 And that in the morning, they would find themselves suited well between self-disclosure, breath practices, guided imagery. Um, he was beneficial to the hurricane victims, uh, after Pauline. And he and I had some impact, which I know continued because I've had contact from individual people from our, uh, early two thousands, um, work in Honduras. Anyway, later, 2004, I went to Mexico City to teach heart rate variability. And I had expensive system. I won't mention it, but it was brand new, new software, and I had all sorts of glitches and troubles and complications. And he brought out his heart math early M wave. Yeah. And did demonstrations with no problems. <laugh>. Yeah. So we were immediately impressed that sometimes the highest technology isn't the best tech technology for this setting. <laugh>. Yes. So, and that lesson is even more true today with, as you said, under $50 for optimal, yeah. H R V.
Speaker 1 00:35:07 Awesome. Well, let me, lemme start us. I, I, well, I wanna give you plenty of runway for this question, but, but ki kind of as we, we hit our time here, I would love to, when you look into the future as we've gone through this, I think unprecedented, at least in my lifetime, uh, stretch of pandemic, civil rights movements, political environment being, I think disorganized is the kind way to put it. Um, been through th this time while our technology continues to advance. Uh, AI is staring us straight in the face at this point, um, of coming on board and maybe giving the deep learning. I'm really excited what we can do feeding that H R V data. Uh, I, I, I just, uh, feel like, like our population norms need, need totally refreshed. We need to, we need to figure out how to get better data, even just to the individual user. But I, I would love to see with everything good, bad, scary, innovative going on in the world right now. Where, where, what do you see sort of the future of H R V, uh, biofeedback, um, you know, going as more and more people are looking to technology, um, to, to solve the world's problems or, or to cause them, uh, <laugh> love to get your love, to get your, uh, eye on what, what's, what's, what do you see the next maybe five, 10 years looking at as our technology gets better and better?
Speaker 2 00:36:39 I would like to see some healing of the world, and I think we can make some contributions. Now, of course, I want to see the high end continue to develop, whether it's neurofeedback, heart rate variability, other forms of, uh, physiological self-regulation, not even yet imagined. I mean, the, the emerging work with F M R I, uh, training to change one's F M R I, reaching discrete sectors of brain systems. Um, but I also want to see, um, reaching disadvantaged communities. Um, when we developed our integrative and functional nutrition, uh, program at Saybrook University, uh, the first cohort of students came through and said, this stuff is too good. It's, we can't just give it to the affluent. Well, and that's partly what was happening at that time with functional nutrition, functional medicine, people who had a lot of money could pay for very expensive, uh, workups with blood work, uh, urine testing, uh, stool samples, uh, running up $1,800 worth of charges not covered by insurance.
Speaker 2 00:37:44 And then you've got the people with lousy insurance or no insurance. Yeah. So our students have been very interested in what, how can they turn the knowledge of functional nutrition into public community education? I love that. Um, to reach an individuals, our mind body medicine specialists, um, are interacting quite a bit with an organization called Integrative Medicine for the underserved. Mm-hmm. The acronym acronym is, IM four US Integrative Medicine for the underserved. And that's the mission. How can we get this stuff out in the form of apps that somebody can afford, uh, somebody who can't even afford a smartphone. Right. Um, how can we get this out in simple skills that we can teach on a group basis or a community basis, a workshop basis, make it available online for those people who can get online. And then how are we can, how are we gonna reach the parts of the community who are not online?
Speaker 2 00:38:45 Right. Of course. First of all, we, whenever possible, we wanna help them get online. And more and more communities are looking at, um, uh, wifi signals for the community. Um, but still tho those are the challenges. So when I think about the future, I think about how are we gonna take this into the average kitchen for the average family. Yeah. And I have to go back somewhat to the vision that Roland McCrady and the HeartMath Institute had. Their early research was saying, this should be in every classroom. Yeah. Whether we get instrumentation into every classroom doesn't matter. But we need affective education. Right. We need self-regulation skills. And that runs into all sorts of obstacles with people feeling like we're interfering with their child's, um, values. Yeah. By teaching, teaching them things like breath mm-hmm. <affirmative> paste breathing. It looks too much like mysticism to some people, and they block it from the classroom. But I think we, it's a, it's sad that we have generations of children who are no longer getting traditional religious education because there's church-going rates keep declining. Yeah. But we're not giving them anything new to replace that. How are we gonna teach them to cope with life, to understand their emotions, to manage their emotions, to manage the, the impact of stress in their bodies. Right.
Speaker 2 00:40:13 So McCrady and his group did research showing that we can, with relatively inexpensive interventions, impact on a classroom, the whole classroom of children. So those are some of the things we need to do. And I mentioned Steve Farian in the prisons, we need a whole lot more of that. Yeah. Cause there are way too many, we actually have more people incarcerated than almost any country in the world, which is such a shame. Right. It's a waste basket for humanity. Right. Throwing away people with potential gifts. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:40:42 And then the communities that get just robbed of their human capital, uh, yeah. For lack of a better word. And families, they get robbed of that too. Absolutely. Uh, you know, and I, I think, you know, with the education piece, I mean, it's such a passion of mine having run a school at some point in my, my past and my, my wife is a, uh, second grade teacher as well, and like, just the level of, you know, distress that the typical child is experiencing. Right. I mean, it just has risen the baseline, I think, of stress dysregulation to, to where I, I hear this from teachers across the country now. It's like the, these children are different. Um, their, their, their issues are way more inten. There's an intensity that's being raised with that. And not, not necessarily a surprise of what we've been through.
Speaker 1 00:41:39 You know, because I think we've all been ch our, our regular, you know, our, our parasympathetic nervous system has been challenged, uh, all of us. But it, I think it's a time where we're really, I think, in this crisis. And I think there's data to back that up, you know, and, and what I'm excited about with work led that you're doing and all the other great frontier, uh, pioneers in this arenas, I really believe that there's a lot of people in the mental health arena, social work arena that, that need the biofeedback folks, like all the work that you all have done, um, that, that I just, I, I'm lucky enough to stand on top of and learn from and absorb of how do we now supplement, um, traditional mental health that, that doesn't use technology to really, like I said, if, if nothing else, residents frequency breathing is the greatest homework. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think you can give anybody like, still journal, because that's what we do as therapist. You gotta journal. But now, now we're actually helping to heal that nervous system that, that, you know, helping to facilitate the healing between sessions, um, that the goal of post-traumatic growth is trying to achieve here. It is like right there in tangible, um, whi which I think is just incredibly exciting. Um, that, that, that we are, are getting there. Um, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:43:00 Well, I, I will just mention here, um, this is one of my concerns is how do we reach out to new audiences? So I just put together an article, um, and got it into the jour, the British Journal, uh, journal of Social Work Practice. Awesome. Because I want more social workers to be aware. Yeah. Um, the article is on the Pathways model, which is an approach to integrating self-care practices with lifestyle change, with cr uh, with traditional, uh, mainstream medical care. Yeah. Um, and it particularly focuses, uh, chronic illness. And I included a case study of a wo a woman dealing with cardiovascular illness. Um, but we included a heart rate variability as, as one of the interventions, uh, because I wanted, I wanted to get that information out to that social work field. Yeah. And I hope that, I hope more social workers will read that article and Yeah. Um, become more aware and ask questions, where can I learn about heart rate variability?
Speaker 1 00:43:57 Right. Will, and it's like tools in our tool belt. Like, like that's how I always look at it when I'm teaching, like motivational interviewing or trauma informed care or whatever it is. Like looking at what tools can be in your tool belt. And I, I just think all the work now, now that the technology really allows us to offer it very, in a very affordable way. Like this, this being a tool and maybe just somebody using it during the session or before or after se, I mean, I think there's so many creative ways that we can work around some of those barriers of cost. And, um, I'm learning more and more that, that smartphones are pretty much, most people have 'em, and I've even gone through some grants to buy burner phones, which I'm sure there's a better name, but I feel so <laugh> like, it's the only time I feel like a gangster is when I say burner phones.
Speaker 1 00:44:49 So I'm not, I'm keeping that term. I, I, I gotta go to like seven 11 and buy 20 burner phones, which probably puts me on some lists that for other reasons I'm already on. But, uh, yeah, I, I just appreciate that. And I would love to have have you back just to talk about Pathways, cuz I know, uh, we, we didn't talk a lot about that. And I think there's just my exposure to that. Uh, you know, as, as I started to learn about your work, uh, uh, probably there's, uh, 10 or 12 podcasts in there. But I would love, I would love to have you back and just, I would
Speaker 2 00:45:23 Love, I would love to come back. I would love to come back, um, with my colleague, uh, angel McGrady. That
Speaker 1 00:45:29 Would be great.
Speaker 2 00:45:29 Um, she was the lead author on the first two books we brought out on, um, the Pathways model. And, uh, now she and I are working on a book for laypeople to help the average person integrate more changes, uh, in self-care, changes in lifestyle to manage their chronic condition. Uh, and we're working with a British publisher. We hope to have a book out within a year for the laypeople. And when that book comes out, we'd love to come on and talk about integrating this for wider group of people, wider group of human beings.
Speaker 1 00:46:02 Well, let's call it a date <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:46:05 Sounds good. Thank you, Matthew. So, so
Speaker 1 00:46:07 Dr. MAs, it has been an absolute pleasure. Um, we, I will put in the show notes, contact information, other ways, uh, for folks to get ahold of you. I really encourage you go on Amazon. Uh, there, there's great resources there. Also, I found you on YouTube. Uh, there's great talks, uh, that, that I found there on the Pathways model. It was like, you know, having, uh, spent a lot of my career working in H I V and public health. Um, I, you know, I I just find that the, the model so integrated that, that, I'm excited to share that with other folks as well. I, the layman's, I, I think book, I'm really excited because it's tools we can give people. Um, especially I I always think about newly diagnosed with chronic illness, especially something with so much That's right. Stigma and misinformation. Like h i v, you know, a model to, to help folks through that experience. Um, and really the concrete examples you give and, you know, uh, I, I think is a such an important tool that you've given the world. So I'm already excited for that conversation. Well,
Speaker 2 00:47:15 Thank you Matthew. I appreciate it. And I also, you mentioned YouTube. We do have a Saybrook University self-care channel Awesome. On YouTube. Awesome. Lots of tools there for, for people, for professionals, but also for your clients.
Speaker 1 00:47:27 Awesome. So, so we'll get those, those links in the show notes. And, uh, with that, uh, like I said, you can find us at optum hr-v dot com. Uh, show notes should be in whatever app you're listening to us or on YouTube. Just, just look for those show notes, uh, to learn more about Dr. Moss's work. And, uh, yeah, we'll see you all next week. Dr. Moss, thank you so much for your time. Take care. I appreciate it.
